Dorothy Parker was escorted to a New York party one evening by a young man of handsome, but haughty mien. After dinner all the guests started to play the childish games that were the hallmark of these gatherings. However. Mrs. Parker's escort remained aloof and refused to join in. Eventually she tried to persuade him herself, but he said:

He's always talking about his inferiors, but no one has ever been able to find them.

Sir Thomas Beecham was travelling to London by train once when he was joined by a lady who promptly lit a cigarette in spite of the No-Smoking sign on the window above her.

'I'm sure you won't mind if I smoke,' she said to Beecham, when she saw the look of disgust on his face.

'Not at all,' he said, 'providing that you don't mind if I'm sick.'

'You don't seem to realize who I am,' the lady said imperiously, 'I am one of the director's wives.'

'Madam.' Beecham replied, 'if you were the director's only wife, I should still be sick.'

The sort of upper crust to which they belong is just a lot of crumbs stuck together with dough.

When he was a young man, the Liberal M.P., Henry Labouchere, served for a time as an envoy at the British embassy in St. Petersburg. Working at his desk one day, he was accosted by a very overbearing Russian who insisted on seeing the ambassador right away. Labouchere, explained that His Excellency was busy, but that he would see him as soon as he was free.

'Pray take a chair,' he said, offering the man a seat while he waited.

'But, young man, have you any idea who I am?' exclaimed the Russian, before cataloguing his many titles and honours. When he finished Labouchere remained respectfully silent for a moment before saying:

'In that case, take two chairs.'

The way she walks about you'd think she was trying to balance her family tree on the end of her nose.

A diplomat friend confided in Talleyrand that he couldn't understand why everyone called him ill-natured.

'For in all my life.' he said. 'I have never done but one ill-natured action.'

'And when will that end?' asked Talleyrand.

It cost them a fortune to dig up their family tree and they're spending even more trying to bury it again.

Dr. Johnson didn't suffer fools and he suffered pompous fools even less than others. Shortly after the publication of his dictionary he was congratulated by a well-known society lady on what she considered to be the major achievement of his work, the omission of any words that might be considered vulgar or immodest.

'And how do you know there are none there, unless you have been seeking them, madam?' Johnson asked her.

He's always boasting that he only eats with the upper set. but everyone knows that he uses the lower ones too.

Archbishop Cosmo Lang commissioned a portrait of himself which had just been completed when he was visited by Bishop Hensley Henson. Lang showed his guest the painting and asked for his opinion. But Henson asked Lang what he thought of it himself, before expressing his own opinion.

'I fear,' said Lang, 'it portrays me as proud, arrogant and worldly.'

'To which of the three does your Grace take exception?' asked Henson.

The best parts of their family tree are buried underground.

Israel Zangwill commented once on Bernard Shaw:

'The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many people believe in no God at all.'